


My End and My Beginning

by BlessedAreTheFandoms



Series: Even When I Lose, I'm Winning [3]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Angst, Enabran Tain's A+ Parenting, Established Relationship, Holodecks/Holosuites, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Insecurity, Inspired by Music, Jadzia Dax is a good bro, M/M, Massage, Medical Trauma, Richard Bashir's A+ Parenting, Season/Series 05 Spoilers, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24576421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlessedAreTheFandoms/pseuds/BlessedAreTheFandoms
Summary: At long last, it's Julian's turn in the exploration of massage....at least, it would be if he would stop fighting with Garak about it.  Trusting a spy, even one with whom you're in love, turns out to be harder than Julian had bargained for.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: Even When I Lose, I'm Winning [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1730293
Comments: 25
Kudos: 100





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't stop writing soft!Garak sorry not sorry.
> 
> Also, Julian will not stop picking fights with Garak. He needs a hug, or something.

“You’ve never asked me about it.”

Elim Garak sighed at the complete non sequitur, rolling back toward Julian Bashir and ensuring the blanket covering them both did not slide off his bared scales. “Asked you about what?”

“The massage.”

Garak refrained from sighing again, though barely. “Would you like me to ask?”

Julian considered this for a moment, sliding one arm behind his head. “I don’t know.”

“Then why are you bringing it up at this particular moment? It hardly seems like your usual post-coital fare.”

“I know,” Julian shrugged. “It’s just…”

A thought crossed Garak’s mind that alarmed him greatly. “You weren’t thinking about it, well, _during_ \--?”

Julian turned his head and smiled at the Cardassian, reaching over to stroke an eyeridge. “No, darling, I was completely and happily preoccupied.”

Garak huffed in annoyance, though whether at Julian’s slightly condescending response or at the idea that his performance would leave room for the mind to wander, he wasn’t sure.

“I swear,” said Julian, turning over fully and resting his head on his hand. He gently traced the lines of the ridges over Garak’s chest with his other fingers. “My mind is always on you when we’re, well, _together_.”

“I am pleased I am still captivating enough for such a voracious appetite as yours,” said Garak, a slight bite of sarcasm in his voice.

Julian’s hand stopped circling and he laid his palm flat against Garak’s _ChUla_. “I deserved that. I’m sorry, Elim, for the abrupt topic change and the poor timing. It’s just—well, I don’t know what you’re doing with that piece of information, that freedom of request. You _not_ bringing it up feels a bit like a sword of Damocles.”

“Of whom?”

“Damocles. There’s an ancient Earth parable about a man named Damocles who envied a king and the king offered to switch lifestyles. Damocles happily agreed and was totally pampered until he realized that there was a sword hanging by a hair above his throne. He was so alarmed by it that he couldn’t enjoy anything anymore and asked the king to switch back because he’d learned the lesson of the king’s constant anxiety about being assassinated and how that flattened his ability to enjoy any of the opulence around him.”

Garak stared at him. “So…you think I’m going to assassinate you.”

“No!” exclaimed Julian. “No, I—wow, I really should have thought of my audience for that reference.” 

Garak said nothing, his face impassively blank, as he shifted ever-so-slightly back, pulling away from Julian’s hand.

“I just—I just meant it in terms of anticipation. I don’t know when the conversation is coming,” said Julian. “I’m sorry, Elim, I didn’t mean—I don’t…” He let his hand fall to the bed between them and the pair lay in silence a moment.

“If the possibility bothers you so, why have you not brought it up yourself?” Garak finally asked.

"I…didn’t want to get into a fight with you about it,” replied Julian. He chuckled quietly, his face showing that it wasn’t actually funny. “I seem to have done so, anyway.”

Garak sat up, twisting so he could look down at Julian. “I am not fighting with you.”

Julian sat up to match, the blanket sliding down his bare hip. Garak stopped himself from reaching over to pull it back up—Julian likely wasn’t cold, and drawing attention to their shared nakedness didn’t seem to be a helpful move at the moment.

“You have every right to,” Julian said, ignoring the blanket. “I just want to know—what are you going to do with this, Elim?”

“What would you have me do?” Garak retorted, barely keeping hold on his frustration. “You have told me several times over that your reasoning for not wanting to be the one receiving this massage makes you terrifically—uncomfortable, to put it mildly, and I have said to you that I will not force your secrets from you. Have I yet broken that assurance?”

“No.”

“Then why are you asking me to cause you distress? If you want to tell me something, do so; guls know you are hardly so discreet about much else.”

As soon as they left his mouth, Garak knew the words were a mistake. “Julian, I—”

“No, go ahead, Garak,” Julian cut in, “tell me again about my Federation naivete, my complete inability to keep secrets from you or anyone else. It’s a wonder anyone’s even given me access to Starfleet information, really.”

Garak ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it from Julian’s less-than-gentle ministrations of—had it only been a few minutes ago? How had this gotten so out of control? They were like this, he and Julian—from fire to fire, never anything but the highest passions. It was destructive, sentimental, foolish, and wildly beyond Garak’s preferred state of watchful placidness.

“I do not wish to continue this conversation in my present state,” he said, turning away to stand and find his trousers.

“Go ahead, put all your armor back on,” Julian bit out. “Must be nice, to have even your skin protect you.”

The barb was unexpectedly sharp and Garak flinched from it. “Do not do this, Julian Bashir,” said Garak, his voice suddenly cold as he stood shirtless across the bed from the human. He was acutely aware of his scars and scales brazenly on display. “Your Damocles sword has already fallen and severed your brain stem if you think I’m going to allow you to shame me for being a _Cardie_.” The slur felt filthy in his mouth, but it alarmed him how deeply Julian’s comment hurt; Garak remembered Julian’s assertions that none of his sharp edges were too much, that his imperfections were not only welcome but perfect, and his fury at Julian’s throwaway line burned through every ridge.

The tenderness Garak usually saw returned to Julian’s face. “Oh, God, Elim, you’re right,” Julian said, horrified, realizing the implications of his own statement. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“I doubt even you know what you meant,” Garak snapped. “I think we should continue this at a later date, when it can begin less abruptly. When would you prefer to fall on that sword?”

Julian reached for him and let his hand fall when Garak made no move toward the bed. “I…can I make you dinner, three days from now? I have the night shift tomorrow and I want to be back in normal rhythm before…before we talk.”

Garak pulled on his undershirt, his tunic, wrapping himself against the ever-present chill of the station that he could not escape, even here in his warmer quarters, binding up the wounds he should never have allowed Julian to be able to inflict. Yes, he would listen, and he would gather information, and he would hold this sword over Julian so that they were matched, sparring with steel that sliced and stung. “Three days,” he agreed stiffly, his back to Julian. “Until then.”

Julian heard the dismissal and quietly pulled on his own clothing. Garak felt him begin to come around the bed but did not turn, standing frozen even after hearing the living room door slide closed.


	2. Chapter 2

Julian found night shifts especially strange on a space station where the days were as artificial as the gravity. He was glad he didn’t have a window in his office to watch the inky black drift by; somehow, _seeing_ it was night always made it _feel_ so much later. He was fortunate that switching shifts rarely made him more tired—he could go several days without sleeping, anyway—but it was always disorienting, like stepping outside of time just enough to no longer be in sync with everyone else. 

Actually, he hated night shifts, but as CMO they were part of the job, and he loved the job.

Julian sighed and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes against the paper on bacterial cultures he’d been reading. He still didn’t know what had possessed him to force the issue with Garak, or why he had been so cruel when Garak had been kind enough to give him all the space he needed. 

_Animals often bite when frightened_ , he thought wryly to himself. That he was even _considering_ telling Garak exactly why he was so uncomfortable was tantamount to handing the Cardassian his Starfleet badge and pips. It was a risk—to his career, his freedom, his entire life. Was it _really_ wise to trust so much to the spy he knew so little?

Julian ran a hand through his hair, listening blankly for a moment to the constant hum of the station and the higher layer of the various equipment beeps in the infirmary. His mind wandered to the memory of the deep scar on Garak’s back, the spray of keloid masses on his stomach, the way Garak’s body had slowly melted under his hands the pair of times Garak had consented to receiving a massage. He remembered the split second look of pain and betrayal that had skittered across Garak’s face when Julian insulted the armored skin he usually claimed to love, that armor that bore so many marks of being insufficient, and Julian knew he could no longer keep lying to the man who was so entwined with him now.

He wished someone would get into a late-night bar brawl so he would have something to do rather than think about how badly this could go.

“Julian?” came a tentative voice just outside his office. Julian sat up quickly, almost bouncing out of his chair.

“Jadzia?” he asked.

Jadzia Dax leaned against his doorframe, winced, and stood straight again. “Hey, Julian.”

“Jadzia, it’s almost midnight. What are you doing here?”

She smiled ruefully. “Late night adventure in the holosuite to burn off some energy.”

“And you turned off the safeties while fighting an army of Klingons?” Julian guessed as he led Dax to a biobed and grabbed a tricorder. He might have guessed that Dax would enliven his shift; she was a whole bar brawl unto herself, sometimes.

“Beats going running through the whole Habitat Ring over and over.” Dax shrugged, winced again, and breathed deeply.

“Well, congratulations; you’re now in the esteemed company of Chief O’Brien in the category of People Who Have Torn Their Rotator Cuffs.”

“Ahhh,” said Dax, understandingly. “Well, that makes sense. The last couple of blocks I had were pretty sudden over-the-head moves.”

Julian sighed. “I’ll need you to change out of that shirt so I can get to the injury with minimal interference. Would you like me to get a nurse to help you?”

Dax raised an eyebrow at him. “I think I can manage.”

“Don’t make it worse,” Julian said. “While I’m repairing this, care to tell me what made the day so stressful that you had to take on a roomful of Klingons slicing at your head?”

Dax almost shrugged again, caught herself, and pursed her lips as she took the infirmary gown from Julian. “Some days are like that, you know,” she said to Julian’s back after he’d turned. “The amount of diplomacy that Benjamin does far outweighs all the rest of us, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have to stand there and listen to quite a few ship captains who think they’re the universe’s gift to sentient species. I miss Curzon’s brusqueness on days like today; Jadzia Dax can’t quite get away with what he could.”

Julian hummed assent as he gathered his tools, wondering at himself that he was not reacting more viscerally to this promise of a glimpse of the Trill spots that continued down Jadzia's neck and disappeared into her t-shirt. Some time ago he would have thrilled to be this close to Jadzia, even professionally; now, his mind was split between concern for her well-being and the lingering frustrations of his own life with Garak.

Funny how things changed.

“Ready,” Dax chirped. “And I’m not in any more pain than I was, so I think I didn’t make it worse.” Julian rolled his eyes good-naturedly at her and set to work on her now-exposed shoulder. “Julian?” Dax asked after a moment, turning her head to him. “Are _you_ okay?”

Julian half-smiled and gently tipped her head away. “Keep still, Jadzia, or I'll accidentally sever your suprascapular nerve.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” replied Dax, though she kept very still. “And that didn’t answer the question.”

“ _You_ are currently in _my_ infirmary, so I’m not entirely sure you get to ask questions.”

“I always get to ask questions.”

Julian smiled fully at that, knowing that the stubborn woman was quite right. “I’m fine,” he said.

“Liar.”

“Oh?” He raised his eyebrows at her, pausing a moment in his work. “Bold assertion.”

Dax simply looked him out of the corner of her eye.

Julian sighed, returning to his focus. “Garak and I—we had a bit of a falling-out.”

“‘A bit’?”

If he didn’t want to tell Garak why he was so afraid, he surely couldn’t tell Jadzia; at least Garak wasn’t in the Federation, wouldn’t have to turn him in by oath. No; best to keep the details to himself. “I said some things to him the other day that were…they were pretty mean.”

Dax’s brow furrowed. “You don’t do 'mean,' Julian. What happened?”

Julian chuckled nervously, wishing he could talk about this but also fiercely aware of the many overlapping reasons he could not. Jadzia being his current patient was only one of them, though it was definitely on the list. “We were just arguing, that’s all.”

“Julian.” Dax’s tone brooked no argument and he looked up at her, not bothering to tell her to tilt her head back again. “Garak doesn’t ‘just’ argue, especially with you.”

“He…he may not have been the one who started it. Or sustained it.”

Dax waited.

“I just…there’s a, well, a conversation I need to have with him, and it’s—I’m—I’m nervous about it.”

“About how you’re in love with him?”

Julian almost jerked in surprise, thanking his superhuman reflexes for catching him just in time. “What?!”

“That you’re in love with him. Unless you also don’t know?” Dax’s confusion would have been comical in any other setting.

“I—well, that’s—I mean…how do _you_ know that?”

Smiling, Dax patted him on the arm with her free hand. “Julian, I’ve known you since your first day on this station. I’ve watched you have a thousand crushes, but the way you react to him is totally different. You _unwind_ , kind of, with him.”

Julian ducked his head to hide his blush. “Not a _thousand_ ,” he muttered to her shoulder, missing the grin that stole easily over her face. They continued in silence for a few moments before he pronounced her healed.

“Is that the conversation?” Dax asked as Julian was rotating her arm to ensure everything was working properly.

“It’s—well, I suppose it kind of is,” replied Julian, thoughtfully. “I hadn’t thought of it like that, but yes.”

Dax hopped off the table and grabbed her t-shirt. “Then have it,” she said.

“Like it’s that simple?”

“Oh, no. Like it’s that complicated. Clearly you’re hurting both of you by stewing over this, so better to have the actual fight than all the ones you invent to camouflage that one.” She twirled her finger and Julian turned around so she could change.

“I would much rather it be simple,” Julian said to the infirmary door.

“Well,” said Jadzia, coming alongside and squeezing his shoulder, “where would be the fun in that?” She smiled thanks at him and left, the hum of the late-night station filling her absence.

Julian sighed, put away her gown, and returned to his office. All other things being equal, he found he would somewhat have preferred the bar fight.

***

Garak perched on the back of his sofa, watching the stars drift past the slowly spinning station’s window. He did not want to sleep in the bed that smelled faintly of Julian, did not want to dream of the laughing hazel eyes that were soft as his browned human skin. The usual litany of Tain’s disapproval was silent in his mind—the sneer that replaced it spoke volumes. Sentiment was a weakness, Garak had been taught. It would only cause trouble.

Tain was right, of course. In some twisted way, he usually was. Garak was a fool to think that Julian could get past his being a Cardassian, could truly accept his need to protect himself. His own body gave Garak away, with its ridges and scars, its untold stories sweeping around every scale. _I promise I won’t hurt you_ , Julian had said, once. Of course he could only mean physically; no promise ever made could stand up to the test of the sheer variety of ways to hurt someone. But Garak had thought that Julian was beginning to understand, or if not understand than at least possibly love—

No. Garak shook his head, turned away from the window. There would be no understanding. There would be no love. How could there be, for someone like him? Even Julian, hopelessly optimistic Julian, could not cross that chasm, at the end. And it had to end. 

Resolved, Garak lay on the couch and closed his eyes, resolutely refusing to acknowledge that he still could not sleep in his Julian-scented sheets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I absolutely headcanon that Jadzia Dax is the resident relationship counselor and that becomes part of Ezri Dax when it's her turn.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we earn those medical trauma tags, fyi. It's brief, but I do want to note it.

Julian paced in his quarters, waiting for the door chime that would announce Garak’s arrival. Dinner lay waiting on the table—he still never quite grasped the timing of serving food when he had Garak over, whether they should talk first and then bring it out so it didn’t get cold, whether they could have their conversations over the meal. Lunch at the Replimat was so much easier; he had a limited amount of time, there was a set of expectations, he understood the rhythm.

He desperately needed to understand the rhythm right now. He sought it in himself—six paces forward, six back, over and over and over, his hands swinging aimlessly. He refrained from asking the computer the time, barely.

At last the door chimed and Julian stopped, squaring his shoulders. “Come in,” he called, and Garak stepped through.

The guardedness was obvious even to Julian’s unobservant eye. Where Julian was in the most casual outfit he could think of—a soft set of brown trousers and a simple long-sleeve shirt of seemingly a thousand muted shades of green that Garak had made for him—Garak himself was in something that looked like a civilian version of Cardassian armor. The overlapping grey rectangles hugged his ridges almost to his neck; the textured fabrics looked rather like the station itself—coarse, severe, utilitarian. 

Julian hadn’t been dating a tailor for almost a year not to know that fashion was a conversation to itself, and an outfit like that did not bode well.

“Good evening, Doctor,” said Garak, his posture as rigid as his clothing.

“Thank you for coming, Garak,” responded Julian, hearing the distance of his title and respectfully matching it. “Would you like to sit to dinner?”

“I would actually like to say something, if you’ll permit me.”

Julian braced himself. “By all means.”

“I have appreciated your company, Doctor,” Garak began, and a knot of something that managed to be both piercingly cold and burning hot squeezed into existence in Julian’s chest. “I admit I have learned a great deal from the association. I thank you for the enlightening conversations we’ve had, but in the spirit of Cardassian practicality—” and Julian could hear the emphasis on Garak’s race, “—I must acknowledge when a good thing has run its course.”

The hot and cold thing in Julian’s chest now had spikes. “You’re—you’re breaking up with me.”

“I am acknowledging that the gulf of our differences has superseded our ability to cross them.” 

“Is this because of the incredibly thoughtless thing I said about your armor?”

“It is a cumulation of things, Doctor.”

“No.”

Garak actually looked at Julian for the first time since he’d stepped into the room. “What do you mean, ‘no’? I have not asked you a question.”

“Nevertheless, no. You are not ending this, it is not ending, we are not done with each other.” Julian shook his head in sheer frustration. “Damn it, Garak, I have turned myself inside out over the past few days trying to get up the courage to tell you what I want to tell you; you are not walking out on this relationship before you’ve heard it. If you’re going to reject me, you can’t do it without all the facts.”

Garak stared. _He_ reject _Julian_? Was it not entirely the other way around such that Garak only had to acknowledge its happening? The edges were too sharp, after all, as Garak had known they would be. He heard Tain's whisper thread through his mind-- _sentiment will be your downfall_.

Yet looking at the way the shirt he’d crafted hung on Julian’s slim frame, at the frustration on that face that showed every emotion, Garak could not find it in him to completely quell the sentiment this man inspired. Julian looked beautiful, as Garak had known he would when he made the garment, but then Julian somehow managed to look beautiful even in the Starfleet uniform which was hardly better than a child’s play outfit. The human within was just as beautiful; for all his faults, Julian Bashir was the best the Federation could offer and he had chosen the exile Elim Garak, and Garak did not know what to do with that.

“What facts?” he said hesitantly, giving in yet again to how much he _wanted_ to be with this man who looked at him with something like affection.

Julian glanced at the dinner cooling on the table and sighed. “Come, sit with me,” he said, leading the way to the couch. Garak hesitated. Julian patted the cushion next to him. “Please?”

Garak followed, sitting rigidly on the edge of the cushions. Julian didn’t comment on it.

“I was…slow, as a child,” Julian began, picking at the cushion fabric between them. “Mentally slow, physically slow—I’d say emotionally slow, but I don’t think I ever got any faster at that.” His short laugh was forced and self-deprecating. “My parents didn’t want slow; they wanted normal, they wanted better than normal, so they went and got it.”

Garak waited, trying to understand.

“They—we went to a planet called Adigeon Prime when I was six. It’s a place that operated outside of Federation regulations; they had a whole medical wing that didn’t care that genetic enhancement is illegal. And I was…I was resequenced, is the official term, which unofficially means that I spent months in the hospital being rebuilt practically from the brain stem up. My mind works faster, my body works better than a—than a normal human. I’m an experiment that went right in a system that thinks my very existence is wrong. So I hide; I hide to be able to stay in Starfleet, I hide to be able to be a doctor, I hide in plain sight as a slightly-above-average human so no one knows that I'm a freak who isn’t human anymore at all. And I lie to everyone about it so that—so that I can stay here, so that I can pretend to be at least close to human. I lie to you, even while I’m constantly asking you to tell me the truth, and that isn’t fair, or kind.” Julian’s shoulders bowed so that his head was almost on his knees, his whole body turned inward and away from Garak.

Garak considered this information. It made a strange kind of sense, smoothing out some of the rougher edges of Julian’s awkwardness, but for him to have missed it entirely spoke volumes both of his acceptance of Julian’s eccentricities and to Julian’s skill at dissembling. Garak was almost proud of the human he had long believed too naïve for his own good even while he was aghast at his own oversight. How much had Julian been holding back so that he would not notice? How much had he allowed himself to miss so that he would not have to ask?

Julian was curled almost into a ball after his admission and Garak thought of the strange comment of someone “manipulating” his body. “So when you lie on a table,” Garak began, piecing the admission to the fear underneath the last few months.

“I remember the surgeries,” Julian said to the floor. “I remember being a lab rat, a project they strapped to the biobed no matter how much I screamed. I remember—I remember so much pain, and fear, and a complete inability to tell anyone to stop, or at least to have anyone listen to me. I remember being alone in a body that was changing in ways I didn't understand, ways that weren't natural. I--I remember feeling who I had been die, in that hospital, and nobody seemed to care about it.”

A flash of something like rage burned through Garak at the thought of a child Julian trapped and tortured by adults who did not see him as valuable. He wondered if this Adigeon Prime still existed and whether he could sneak off the station long enough to burn it into ash. It made sense, now, the times that Julian had suddenly stiffened and shifted position when they were together, that he never liked to be held down entirely, that even for a doctor he was remarkably reluctant to be a patient. Garak, with his own secrets woven into his very scales, understood.

“I know I'm illegal, Garak,” Julian continued, misreading Garak’s silence, “and I understand if knowing I'm not human, either—if that sickens you. You can have me thrown out of Starfleet, now; arrested by the Federation, even, if you want. You—you have every right to. But I wanted you to know that it’s not—I’m not afraid of you, or that you would hurt me, if I were the one getting a massage, and I'm so sorry that I've made you feel less than the marvelous and beautiful person you are. I just…I can’t lie there like that, letting my body be controlled by someone else, not even you. I’ve been—I’ve been so afraid of about a hundred different things and I said such _awful_ things to you, things I _knew_ would hurt and that was terrible of me, that was _cruel_ and I’ve wanted so much to show that augments don’t have to be _cruel_.” He pulled even further into himself, arms wrapped tightly around his torso.

“Julian,” Garak finally responded, “I am not sickened.” While Cardassians were not overly enamored of genetic reconstruction, they did not share the same degree of loathing that pervaded the Federation. It was rather more difficult, as he understood it, to rebuild a Cardassian at the genetic level, so only the very wealthy and the very desperate tried it. Failures did not live to take over planets as they had in Federation history; they often died, slowly and painfully, an object lesson of a much different kind. For Julian to have survived what sounded to be an extensive overhaul was actually impressive.

“You aren’t?” said Julian, raising his head slightly, catching Garak’s eye briefly with a flash of hope.

“I am not,” Garak responded. “Being embedded with a human is a far greater leap for me than being embedded with an augment.”

“But I’m not really human,” Julian repeated, so softly Garak almost missed it.

“Ah,” said Garak, momentarily at a loss for words. His own identity as a Cardassian was so thoroughly unquestionable that he was uncertain how one could even have an identity crisis. “Did they use the resequencing structures of another species?”

“No.”

“So you are genetically human?”

“I’m far beyond what any human could possibly be capable of becoming.”

Which, Garak reflected, was not the same at all. Julian was simply ahead of evolution by several hundred years or so.

“I’m a freak.”

Garak thought over the conversation for a moment. He could not help the human understand his own humanity; pointing out their differences would merely underscore that Julian was not Cardassian, which they both already knew quite well. But the underlying concerns— _ah_.

“I have no intention of turning you in to Starfleet,” Garak said.

Julian looked at him and held the gaze, finally. “But you could.”

“I could,” Garak conceded, “but then with whom would I discuss literature over lunch? And who would explain the oddity of a massage chair to me? Whom would I take to my bed? I do not believe the constable has nearly as many delightful sounds as you make, my dear.”

Julian stared at him. “That’s—that’s it?”

“What’s it?”

“You still want to—to have lunch with me? To listen to me? To sleep with me?”

Garak tilted his head. “I do indeed.”

“But…but I’m an augment.”

Garak refrained from pointing out that yes, he had understood that information. “Julian, the only thing that has changed from an hour ago is that I have new language to consider how you understand yourself and a new awareness of how you interact with me. You were an augment when you fought with me several days ago. You were an augment when you rebuilt a massage headrest in consideration of my ridge structure. You were an augment when you made me read Shakespeare. You were an augment when we had sex—every time.” Julian blushed slightly. “You were an augment every time you saved a patient, every time you didn’t, every time you have been infuriating and every time you have been kind. I can now rearrange some of those memories to better understand a subtext I did not know was there, but it does not change who you were.”

“But I’ve been _lying_ to you this whole time.”

“And it has been the truth you needed to present. My dear doctor, do you really think I am the one who will tell you that a lie that protects the greater narrative of aid is a _bad_ thing?”

“No,” said Julian, “I don’t suppose you are.”

Garak shifted so that his body was turned as fully as possible to Julian. “I understand that your desire for complete honesty is, hmm, at a rather different level than mine, but do not think that I feel betrayed in any way because you were protecting yourself.”

Julian thought about that for a moment. “I didn’t _have_ to go into Starfleet.”

“But now that you are there and doing quite a bit of good, the protection is necessary.”

Laying a hand on the sofa between them, Julian said hesitantly, “So, you—you still want…”

“You? Yes, Julian. My objections to you have everything to do with your poor taste in literature and fashion, not with your genetic structure.” Garak smiled gently until Julian looked up again. He reached forward and laid his hand on top of the doctor’s, grey skin on brown over the rough sofa cushion. Julian turned his hand over and squeezed Garak’s tightly, his face a shifting kaleidoscope of emotional expressions.

“How are you—how are you not utterly horrified by me?”

Garak tilted his head in confusion. “Should I be?”

“Yes!”

“Well, we both know that I live to frustrate other people’s expectations.”

Julian laughed, his voice catching at the end of it as his body shuddered. Garak was alarmed. Was he having a medical reaction to something?

“Julian?” he asked.

“I’m—nope, I’m not okay, but I’m okay,” Julian responded, his shoulders shaking irregularly. It was jerkier than when he laughed, but he wasn’t crying. For lack of any other instinct, Garak reached out his other hand to steady Julian’s shoulder. 

“Should I call the infirmary?”

A strangled thing in similar pitch to a laugh bubbled out of Julian. “No, Elim, this—this is a stress reaction. Apparently Cardassians don’t have them, but my body has been pretty tightly wound for a while and the fact that you don’t hate me is a curveball I was not expecting and my adrenaline levels don’t know what to do.” His whole body began to shake slightly. “It’s—I just…” He shook his head and Garak went for the thing that often seemed to work—he pulled Julian closer to him, folding the lanky human into his side. Julian gripped his shirt like a lifeline and shivered against him, every inch of him pressing into Garak while Garak held him tightly, utterly out of his depth. Garak knew that the Federation had no love for augments, but he had never considered a citizen—especially his guileless doctor—would dare to live hidden in plain sight. Perhaps there was more nuance to the seeming monolith than he’d judged.

After some time, Garak felt Julian’s breathing against him slow and deepen. “Julian?” he asked, unable to see if he’d fallen asleep.

“I’m here,” came Julian’s voice, rough and strained as though he’d just completed a triple shift.

Garak guessed it was a reassurance as much to Julian as to himself. He had no idea what to do next but hesitated to ask; it was quite likely Julian didn’t know, either. He needed more information, however. “Does anyone else know?” 

“Only my parents and me. Well, and the doctors.” Julian shuddered again, more gently but still noticeably. “And now you.”

Garak tightened his embrace; physical affection did not come naturally to him, but in this moment he didn’t think his words were what Julian needed. His guess was rewarded by Julian returning the gesture, burrowing his head into the place where Garak’s _ChUla_ lay hidden under his tunic and placing the tips of his fingers over where he knew the ridged edges to be.

“Thank you, Elim,” Julian said softly. “I—I’m so sorry for what I said to you, _about_ you.”

Garak hummed deep in his chest, the sound thrumming under Julian’s head. To know that this much fear drove that kind of targeted attack—well, had he not done the same when he was in pain? The wounded are the most dangerous. Julian’s words still stung, but Garak felt he had hardly any room to be indignant about it.

They stayed in the embrace for a while more until Julian stiffened suddenly. Garak instinctively let go and Julian sat upright, looking at the table. “The dinner!” he said, turning to Garak with a stricken look. “Oh, I never do get the timing right.”

Garak stared at him. “I think, my dear, this was not something you could have planned to the hour.”

“But I should get something for you, for us, to eat.”

“Indeed. In a moment,” Garak said, brushing a hand over Julian’s shoulder, and Julian smiled, nestling up against Garak once more, his head rising and falling with Garak’s breaths, their fingers entwined on Garak’s chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who are curious, [here](https://thepropstop.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/garak1.jpg) is the shirt I have in mind. It's from much later in the series, actually, but I figure costume is the least of my worries in the list of ways I'm breaking canon.


	4. Chapter 4

It took two weeks of Garak patiently being exactly as he had been for Julian to begin believing that the Cardassian was neither irreparably shocked nor deeply horrified. They had been a fun, if somewhat frustrating, two weeks for Garak as he coaxed Julian into ever more truthful expressions of his actual abilities when they were together in private. Could he actually remember the _entirety_ of the third chapter of Preloc? Was he strong enough to shift furniture without Garak’s help? By the second week, Julian was comfortable enough to resume intimacy with Garak, and this was a new playground—with Julian gradually holding back less and less, Garak found it was almost as though he had a new partner with delicious new levels of strength, stamina, and creativity, not to mention memory of the various ways Garak himself responded to various stimuli.

If Garak had been waiting for Julian to bring up the topic rather than he himself, well, there were some things best left unsaid.

“Garak?” Julian asked hesitantly over lunch one day in the pause after a particularly detailed disagreement over the merit of the novel _The Three Musketeers_. Garak felt rather proud of himself for getting Julian to admit to having read at least part of the novel in the original French, an old Earth language that meant nothing to Garak but was quite lovely to hear sliding off of those human lips.

“Hmm?” Garak replied.

“I—I was wondering.”

Always a statement that was equally intriguing and dangerous, coming from Julian.

“About; well, about our stalemate on the—the massage.”

When had it become a chess game? Garak had not been playing in such a way as to be stalemated, but then he supposed it was helpful to Julian to think he had been having an equal amount of trouble about the idea. Certainly he had been, when the table had been on offer to him. “What have you wondered?” he asked, cautiously.

“Well, I…I mean…would you…would you still be willing?”

“In which position?”

“The one giving.”

Garak looked searchingly at Julian, trying to discern whether this was another of his ill-advised self-sacrificial attempts. “Are you certain?”

“As I’m going to be, I think,” responded Julian, obviously fighting to hold Garak’s gaze.

A thousand alarms began to swirl in the back of Garak’s mind and he quieted them briefly. “Perhaps we should go over the ‘boundaries and rules’ that you so graciously extended to me,” he said, his tone as hesitant as his words.

Julian beamed at him. Much though he loved to make Julian smile, Garak was often at a loss as to _how_ he had done so. “Is that agreement?”

“It is wonder that I lucked into knowing you and have somehow managed to trick you into being so marvelous to me.”

“Hardly a trick, my dear doctor,” protested Garak. “I may be a simple tailor, but you’d be amazed at how well one learns to read people in the trade.”

Julian rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

“There is, I have discovered, a modified form of the table that allows one to sit facing forward while still allowing the one giving the massage to work. Would you prefer that or a variation of the chair?”

Julian’s eyes sparkled in appreciation and Garak felt as though he had swallowed sunlight that pooled pleasantly in his stomach. “Garak, did you research this?”

“But of course,” he said.

“Even though you didn’t know whether I would ever be able—whether I would be ready?”

“Even though,” Garak confirmed. “It is always useful to understand one’s options in the event further information is necessary.” And he had begun to understand that this was far more important to Julian than to him, this moment of confronting one's own fear.

Julian reached across the table and briefly brushed his hand over Garak’s. “Thank you,” he said.

Garak tilted his head.

“I—I’ve seen some of the table modifications I think you’re talking about,” Julian said thoughtfully, withdrawing his hand and picking up his fork again. “I think I could do that. If—I mean, if we can…or you can, well, give me a minute, if I need it.”

Garak waited until Julian looked up from his plate into his eyes. “I will show you the same consideration you gave me,” he said honestly. “There is no point to this exercise if you are worsened by the experience.”

Julian nodded, almost to himself. “Okay. That’s—okay. That’s good.” He took a deep breath. “Night after tomorrow?”

“I will be there.”

“With bells on.”

Garak looked askance at him. “Is it necessary that I wear bells?” Julian only laughed in reply.

***

Julian smiled as he walked into the holosuite, recognizing the room he had programmed for Garak with the dim lighting and the warm tones. “Cannibalized my work, did you?” he said playfully as Garak welcomed him in.

“One should never waste effort duplicating that which is serviceably in existence,” Garak responded without apology. “You’ll find a few differences, however.”

Julian swallowed; he had avoided looking at the table in the center, had kept his eyes on Garak, but he would have to climb onto it at some point, after all. He took a deep breath and examined it; the angle of the tilt meant he would almost be sitting upright, and the armrests on either side gave him something to push on if he needed to leverage himself off the cushions. The piece was a good combination of the chair and the table he had crafted for Garak, and the rush of gratitude he felt toward the Cardassian for the attention to detail and the kindness of accommodation made him slightly dizzy for a moment.

“It is—it—thank you, Elim,” he said, sliding his hand into Garak’s and squeezing briefly.

“Shall we try it out?” Garak asked, warmth in his blue eyes.

Nodding, Julian reached for his shirt. “If it’s alright with you, I—I should think keeping my trousers this time might help,” he said shyly.

“Whatever is comfortable,” Garak answered, tucking the “this time” away in his mind. “Computer: play ‘Garak Bashir sequence one,” he said to the air, and the gentle lilt of an Earth string quartet tumbled into the room.

“Taking on my suggestive mood music, are we?” teased Julian as he laid his shirt on a low bench by the wall.

Garak realized Julian was remembering a conversation they had had months ago and wondered if he had it verbatim. “You humans are rather malleable, a trait it's only fair I exploit for the betterment of your health,” he said. He waited as Julian stepped to the edge of the table, to its side, brushing the armrests.

“Nothing for it, I guess,” Julian said, and rolled himself onto the table. His arms clenched and his fists closed by his sides as he adjusted to the position. Garak didn’t move, letting him find his own peace for a moment as the cellist’s notes drifted. After a moment, Julian took a deep breath and flexed his fingers, opening his hands and lifting his arms to place them at his side.

“Breathe, Julian,” Garak said quietly, and Julian smiled softly at the reversal. Garak breathed with him a moment, in, and out, until Julian laid his head against the head rest and closed his eyes. “Good, Julian, very good.” The smile deepened in the expressive face.

Garak took a few minutes simply to run his hands over Julian’s arms, shoulders, chest, and stomach, reminding himself of the separation of this act from his usual wish to devour the golden body. Julian, for his part, was mindfully releasing muscles as Garak’s palms slid over them, each exhale unwinding his taut frame a little more. Stretching his fingers, Garak stood to Julian’s side and began to knead the line connecting Julian’s neck to his torso, tilting his head slightly away to better access the muscle group. He worked in silence for some time, inching his way down Julian’s collarbone and onto his arm, massaging the bicep, the elbow, the forearm, the wrist, the palm, the fingers. Julian’s long and lovely hands were such a fascination to him, these surgeon’s hands, soft and strong at the same time.

“I feel like if I tried to grip a scalpel right now, I’d drop it,” said Julian into the quiet, his eyes still closed.

Garak smiled. “Relaxation is the idea.”

“And you’ve been doing your research on human musculature.”

Scoffing, Garak laid Julian’s hand back down on the armrest and crossed to the other side. “This would hardly be a fair exchange if I hadn’t.”

Julian let Garak tilt his head in the other direction. “I would say I’m impressed at how quickly you’ve figured out the connections of major muscle groups, especially given that you didn’t have the extra help of physiology via medical practice, but then so much about the incredible amount of information in that mind of yours impresses me that it really shouldn’t be remarkable anymore.”

Not knowing how to respond to such a curious compliment, Garak said nothing.

“I am—I am glad we could do this, Elim,” Julian continued after a moment, his voice low.

“As am I,” Garak said, pushing with his thumb into Julian’s forearm.

“Ah!” cried Julian, his eyes opening and his breath coming short.

“Too much?”

“No, just—you found a knot, or something. I’m right-handed, so that makes sense that it would be there from how often I pick things up and hold things and— _ow_ ,” he said, wincing as Garak pushed again.

“Breathe in,” said Garak, one eyeridge raised, and Julian looked sheepishly at him before doing so, settling back against the table and focusing on his breath.

“They do say that doctors are the worst patients,” Julian said, his eyes closed once more. “I suppose that’s true of massages, too.” 

Garak smoothed out the offended tissue and continued down the arm, wrist, palm, fingers. A Cardassian tune filtered through the room and Garak drank in the familiar rhythm; he hadn’t been able to resist at least some of his home world’s music and he doubted Julian minded. He let go of Julian’s hand and walked back up to his shoulders, leaning over to rub the muscles along Julian’s sharp collarbone.

As he pressed down, Julian’s hand shot up, locking around Garak’s wrists painfully tightly, almost breaking the bones against each other. Garak instantly went still as Julian’s eyes snapped open, unseeing. Breathing through the pain of Julian’s grip, Garak let his hands go limp. “Julian,” he said softly.

After a moment, Julian’s breathing slowed and he let go. He blinked, looking at Garak fully, then down at the bruises beginning to bloom against the grey skin. “Oh, my gods,” Julian said, sitting up and examining Garak’s arms, “oh, Garak, I am so, so sorry, I—here, let me heal those—” He made as if to stand but Garak gently placed a hand on his chest, where the _ChUla_ would be.

“Julian, I am fine,” Garak said. 

“I could have broken your wrists!”

“You did not.”

Julian scratched his forehead in frustration. “I—that was—that was purely an automatic response, I am so sorry. I thought I had more control than that.”

Garak sighed and carefully guided Julian back to his reclined position. “Then I know to be more careful with your chest,” he said. “It is a solid object lesson.” He smiled, but Julian’s frown deepened. 

“I could have—I did, judging by how fast those bruises are forming—hurt you very badly.”

“Further parameters for my understanding that enhanced strength of yours,” Garak said, rubbing soothing circles into Julian’s palm.

“Right, that strength that only seems to come in handy to hurt the person I definitely don’t want to hurt,” Julian scoffed.

“No edge too sharp,” Garak said, surprising them both with the reference to Julian’s own promise. Julian closed his fingers around Garak’s and lifted his other hand to brush the bruises on the microscales.

“Your armor doesn’t always protect you,” he said softly, not looking Garak in the eye.

Garak considered a quip, discarded it. “No.”

“I am so sorry.”

“Julian.” Garak waited until Julian lifted his eyes to meet Garak’s. “This is a lesson to us both about where some of your, hmm, boundary lines are. I know that reaction, now, and so do you. We shall both be wary of it. I will remember not to push on your chest without warning, and you will endeavor not to break my wrists. Agreed?”

Julian looked miserable but nodded. “Agreed.”

“Good, Julian,” Garak said. “Now, there is no injury that won’t fade quickly in a matter of days—far quicker, judging by your desire to take one of your medical tools to me—so please stop undoing the work I’ve done here by worrying about it.”

With a half-smile, Julian took a deep breath and relaxed back into the table. The pair continued in silence for some time, Julian unwinding again, Garak working on Julian’s arms and shoulders while conscientiously avoiding his chest. After a while, Garak smoothed out the last of the tension and stood behind Julian, hands on his shoulders, simply resting. Julian reached up and took one of Garak’s hands in his, kissing the wrist gently.

The music switched and a single female voice chanted into the space, a quiet drum pounding underneath. Julian stiffened slightly. “Garak?”

“As it turns out, Arabic lullabies are rather difficult to discover in Starfleet archives. It seems such things in anything other than Standard are not recorded as often or kept as assiduously.”

Julian pulled Garak around to be able to perch on the edge of the table beside him. “You tried to look up an Arabic lullaby?”

Garak shifted uncomfortably. “You had mentioned them being connected to a positive emotional reaction for you.”

Smiling, Julian leaned forward and kissed Garak lightly. “This isn’t one I grew up with, but I can recognize the rhythms. It’s from Sudan, right?”

“The country of one of your ancestral lines, if I am correct.”

“You are.” Julian leaned back, letting the repetition of the lullaby wash over him. “I love that you tried to look up a lullaby for me.”

“Operative word being ‘tried,’” Garak said.

“Hey,” Julian protested, entwining his fingers with Garak’s. “Operative word indeed being ‘tried.’ You know how many people in Starfleet care that I have a cultural connection to Sudan? Exactly none, in my experience. The fact that you remembered that, and that you were respectful of the Federation not actually being one amalgam of every people that preceded it, is a gift—full stop. Just because it’s not one of the songs I remember doesn’t invalidate the attempt at all. Besides,” Julian grimaced, “given the rather intense interruption of my childhood, many of those lullabies I _do_ know are rather…bittersweet for me, anyway.”

Garak considered this, recognizing the lack of such a soothing practice immediately in Julian’s stories of being left alone to survive his pains. He was suddenly very glad he had failed his objective.

“Thank you, Elim,” Julian said, leaning back against the headrest, Garak’s hand still in his. “Thank you for all of this.” He took a deep breath and held it, listening to the last of the woman’s voice as it finished its song. “I thought you would end me, you know,” he said to the ceiling in the sudden silence.

“I have no intention of killing you, least of all here,” objected Garak.

“No, no,” Julian laughed, “not by killing me. By turning me in. But instead, you—well, you found me a lullaby.”

Thoroughly confused, Garak waited.

“What a strange new beginning you are, Elim Garak,” proclaimed Julian, sitting up and kissing Garak fully, purposefully. “Now, shall we go heal those wrists? They are not quite the kind of bruises I find attractive on that lovely Cardassian body of yours."

Garak’s eyeridges raised in surprise. “I think, Doctor, I would be very interested in hearing more about what kind you _do_.” 

Julian winked at him and swung his legs off the table, grabbing his shirt and pulling it back on before holding a hand out to Garak to join him. “Coming?” 

Garak smiled lasciviously and Julian laughed as they left the suite together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this has been a curious and lovely challenge to write this series. Thank you again to [flyingpiranhas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingpiranhas/pseuds/flyingpiranhas) and [NinjasPiratesLasersandDragons](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NinjasPiratesLasersandDragons/pseuds/NinjasPiratesLasersandDragons) for encouraging me to keep exploring what this could be, and for all of you who hopped on and said yes, this is worth continuing.
> 
> For some extra-sensory info, the table I have in mind is [here](https://www.vitalitymedical.com/spamaster-3-section-tilt-portable-massage-table.html) and the Sudanese lullaby is [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0ia1o7zcsA). No idea what the lullaby means, but it is soothing.


End file.
